


oh, i really wanna take care of you

by chancellor_valdez



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Health Issues, Recreational Drug Use, Suicide Attempt, archive warning for an attempt (not theon x sansa), they all have a hard time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-15 22:18:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18678457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chancellor_valdez/pseuds/chancellor_valdez
Summary: Sansa Stark and Theon Greyjoy know loss, and they know pain. It's not easy and they break, but they put each other back together again. Over and over.(Or, Sansa and Theon taking care of each other throughout their lives)





	oh, i really wanna take care of you

**Author's Note:**

> this was exhausting, and maybe not my best, but they deserve it
> 
> (title from macaroni song by corey kilgannon)

Sansa Stark is a river. She is smooth water and a soft breeze, quiet smiles and delicate fingers. Rosey dresses and auburn hair and porcelain skin. She is a light summer rain in the middle of the day.

Theon Greyjoy is a perilous cliff. He is shifting rocks and frigid air, too loud laughter and cold hands. Dark jeans and messy hair and skinned knees. He is an entire thunderstorm darkening her horizon. 

He’s trouble. 

She knows this the day Robb brings him home like a stray dog, scrawny and wild and biting at ankles. She is ten and he is thirteen and it takes her all of five minutes to decide she does not like him. 

He yells over her and steps on her feet and his dirty hands leave streaks on the window. He talks with his mouth full and pulls her hair and when she spills lemonade all down the front of her favorite dress, he laughs. 

Unfortunately, her father decides to pity the weird gangly child climbing around their house and all but adopts him into the family. After that, wherever Robb goes, Theon goes, like a shadow. She avoids him until she can’t and hates him until she doesn’t.

When he helps her reach the leftover Halloween candy hidden in the top cabinet that her mother thinks they don’t know about, she thinks maybe he’s not 100% evil.

 

 

“Theon, stop. You’re going to get blood on the rug,” she says, exasperated in the way she can get when she’s trying not to yell at him. Four years of conditioning and barely there patience went into that voice.

He’s sitting on the bathroom countertop, holding a dishrag that used to be white, and is now very red, to his forehead. He still manages to roll his eyes at her. “Yeah, sure. Like I can help where my blood falls.”

She’s on her tiptoes reaching for the first-aid kit in the back of the closet, like she’s done for him a thousand times before, and she would flip him off if she wasn’t such a lady. She does it in her head, just to let it out. “Just stop moving around for five seconds, geez.”

“When did you get so bossy?”

She sighs plainly and carries the little box over to him. “I’ve always been this bossy.” She flips the lid open and starts pulling out the usual: gauze, alcohol, butterfly bandages. She hadn’t seen the supposed wound when he walked in, but based solely on the amount of blood now dripping onto the counter it must be bad. 

“Alright, let me see it.” 

A long gash cuts across his left temple, from his hairline to his eyebrow. She can’t tell if it’s deep, the skin pulling and puckering around the edges. Fresh blood drips down his cheek and it almost looks like tears. She hisses as she looks, touching her fingers softly to his skin as tenderly as she can. He winces and pulls away from her.

“Ow!”

“Well if you weren’t such a giant idiot maybe...”

He only glares at her while she continues to poke and prod at the raw skin. 

“What happened this time?” she finally asks him quietly, in the safety of the bathroom walls because she knows it’s the only place he’ll tell her.

“It’s nothing. Just… some kids were picking on Bran. Tearing into him after school, about his chair you know. Just being dicks. I took care of it is all.” 

She has to sigh to herself as she soaks the cotton pad with alcohol and starts wiping around his temple, cleaning the blood away. He’s so impulsive sometimes. _Most of the time._ She probably patches him up, here in this bathroom at least two or three times a month. It used to be more. He was always getting into fights, black eyes and bloody knuckles and broken noses. 

Bullies outside the school or just people that wore down his patience or his father...

He was always trying to hide it away until Sansa caught on. Now she get’s to play nurse everytime he fucks up and or bites off more than he can chew. Which is always.

“Yeah, I can see your head took real good care of it,” she presses the pad down right over his eyebrow for emphasis. 

“They slammed me into a wall.” She cringes. Of course he stood up for her brother and fought a bunch of jackasses and got his face smashed into a wall and busted open. 

“Well, then thanks. For protecting him, I guess.” 

“He doesn’t need that shit,” was his response. 

It doesn’t look deep enough to need stitches this time, despite the amount of blood all over the place. She finishes cleaning it up and pulls the edges closed with a few butterfly bandages. She tapes a piece of gauze over top just in case, and because he deserves to look dumb for being such an idiot in the first place.

“You staying here tonight?” she asks as she finishes putting everything away. She knows his dad doesn’t like it when he gets in fights. He gets upset.

“Nah, got a hot date,” he slides back to the floor and winks at her. 

“Poor girl,” she mumbles. 

“Ha, hilarious.” 

She sticks her tongue out at him. “Just try not to bore her too much.

“Yeah sure,” he chuckles. “Thanks again, Sans.”

He ruffles her hair as he leaves.

 

 

 

“Do you know what time it is?” His voice is thick, but only like he’s trying to sound mad when he really isn’t. It’s 2am and she knows for a fact Theon has not gone to bed before 4am on a Saturday since he was fifteen.   
That’s why she was calling him, and not Robb or Jon or, god help her, her father. That and she was less scared of him than she was her brothers. 

She just really, really hopes he’s not drunk or high or both.

“I need a favor.” 

“At two in the morning?” 

“Yes?”

“Then no.”

“Theon, _please_ ,” he must hear it in her voice, the desperation maybe, because the line doesn’t go dead and when he responds his voice isn’t low and annoyed anymore.

“What’s wrong?”

“I need a ride. I’m at this party-”

“You’re _what_?” he interupts her, alarm biting his tone.

“I’m at this _party_ ,” she emphasizes the word. So he gets it. “And my ride’s gone and I’m… I think I’m kinda drunk and I really don’t want Robb to yell at me, but I don’t know anyone here and I just want to go home.”

“Are you okay?” 

“I’m fine. Can you just pick me up? I know you’re not in bed yet.” 

He’s quiet for a few seconds, like he’s thinking about it. She really thinks he might actually leave her there just to be a dick and she’ll have to call Robb, or Jon, and listen to them yell at her for the entire 30 minute ride home.

“Where at?” he sighs.

“Highgarden Heights.” She’s sitting on the curb in front of the house, still alight with color and music and her dress is too thin for the chill in the air. She runs her hands over her bare arms to generate some type of heat. Damn Margaery for convincing her she wouldn’t need the jacket. In _October_.

“Send me the fucking address. I’ll be right there.” 

His shitty car pulls up ten minutes later and when she gets in, the seat warmer is already on.

 

 

 

Her father is dead.

That’s all she keeps thinking. 

Her father is dead and it is too warm and too sunny for a funeral. It should be raining and bleak and cold. The sky should weep for him, she thought. It wasn’t fair. This wasn’t funeral weather. This was ‘drive to the beach for the afternoon and play sand volleyball until her skin turned pink’ weather. 

But there would be no beach today and the sun did not hide behind any clouds in respectful mourning and her father was still dead.

It doesn’t feel real. That he could be there, teaching her to drive and burning eggs at breakfast, and then some idiot could take him away, just like that, for the $12 in his wallet. It feels like the worst nightmare she’s ever had and she can never, ever wake up.

They’re leaving for the funeral soon, but she’s still sitting in her room looking at her own reflection in the mirror. Her skin looks so pale, like she is a paper doll someone left out in the rain. The black dress she wears is her mother’s and it feels too big and too small at the same time. She didn’t own anything black, anything fitting for a funeral. She thinks after this she might want to. 

Her blue eyes are too sad for a 16 year old girl today, ringed in red from too many days of crying. But then the crying stops and now she just feels numb. 

Her father is dead. Her father is dead. Her father is dead. Her father-

Someone startles her by knocking on the door behind her and she turns, surprised to see Theon leaning in the doorway.

He’s in a suit, probably one of Robb’s, and she’s never seen him in a suit before. It’s just something else that feels wrong about that day. He’s a boy meant to wear ripped jeans and black t-shirts with holes in the armpit, not nice suits and black ties around his neck. 

 

“Your mom told me to come get you,” he explains. His voice is rough and his eyes sort of remind her of the ocean when it rains. He’s trying not to cry too. 

She nods, but for some reason she can’t move. She doesn’t want to. If she moves, her feet will carry her down the stairs where her family waits with sad faces. They’ll take her to the car, and the funeral home, and her father’s body that isn’t her father anymore, and then he’ll be in the ground and it’ll be over. 

She takes a huge gulp of air and her chest shutters and wants to collapse. She locks it away.

“You can cry, you know?”

“Not today,” she says sadly. She wouldn’t cry today.

He must understand it too, the way his face slips. He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out, of course, a silver flask. He offers it to her. It’s such a Theon move, such a Theon way to deal with things like death and distress, if she could feel anything she might smile. 

She almost doesn’t take it, but maybe she needs the bravery.

It burns all the way down, like soft, warm fire tickling her throat and pooling in her belly. Mostly she hates it, but part of her revels in the slight pain of it, part of her loves it. 

“He’d kick my ass for that,” he says almost wistfully, like in some alternate timeline where Ned Stark was still alive he’d throw the door open and drag him out by his collar. 

She wants to smile, but her lips don’t move. “He’d hate this. He hated funerals.”

“I think most people most people do.” 

She gives him a bored expression and takes another drink, before handing it back. “You know what I mean. They were too sad for him. He’d been to enough...”

“Yeah.” He sighs in the silence and rubs his hands over his face for a long moment before looking at her again. “No crying,” he whispers, and takes a long swallow of his own. _To Ned. To dad._

“No crying,” she nods. 

“Ready?” He puts the flask back inside his jacket and straighten his back like he’s going into battle.

“No, but it’s time anyway.”

“You can hold my hand if you need to.” He means it as an attempt at a half joke to comfort her, to give her something familiar. But when they’re actually standing in the church, and people she doesn’t even know are telling her they’re sorry for her loss and that her father was a good man as if they had any clue, she reaches for his hand and he squeezes her fingers and she feels just a little bit better.

 

 

 

It’s not their last funeral. Not even close. Her mother dies almost a year later. Lung cancer.

They catch it too late and Sansa watches her mother waste away and fall apart and choke on her own breath and then suddenly she’s an orphan and she’s scared. 

She gets angry and she gets sad and so unbelievably confused. What did they do to deserve this? Why would someone take both her parents and leave her dangling over such a dark hole that never ends? 

Robb drops out and Jon moves in with them and they stop being dumb kids and have to become adults.

Arya and Rickon get mad and lash out and get in fights at school and yell at her over dinner. 

Bran just stops talking.

She wonders how they got here. 

She cooks dinner and helps with English homework. Robb gets a job and helps with math. Jon cleans and drives them to practices and helps with history. None of them are very good at science.

Theon is there most days, but even he doesn’t laugh like he used to. He’s there to make it feel normal again. As much as he can. And to take care of her when she forgets.

He makes sure she eats when she doesn’t want to or she forgets. He drinks with her on the porch when everyone else is asleep, but she’s afraid to close her eyes and see her parents. He covers her in a blanket when she finally falls asleep on the couch. 

But his eyes get darker and he doesn’t laugh as much and he always smells like whiskey and sometimes she wonders who takes care of him then? He’d lost part of his family too. The family that mattered. 

So they all fall apart and then try put themselves back together even though they’re missing pieces and they all feel too fragile. They survive the only way they know how.

 

 

 

The crash and the yelling wakes her up. She hears Robbs voice through the walls, at least it sounds like Robb, but the words are too frantic and her brain hasn’t caught up with the rest of her senses yet. There’s another crash and she sits up in the dark.

Her clock says 3:14.

She goes to the door and when she throws open it she can hear Robb shouting from downstairs. He sounds scared, she never hears Robb sound scared and it makes her heart trip. It frightens her so much she’s flying down the hall and taking the steps two at a time and she doesn’t even think about the fact that she’s only wearing the large t-shirt she sleeps in.

The downstairs bathroom light is the only one on. That’s where she goes. When she stands in the doorway, her heart doesn’t just trip, it stops.

He’s crouched next to the toilet and he’s holding a slumped Theon by the shoulders. He’s cursing and shaking his shoulders and pulling him across the floor and his face is red and she can’t tell if the wetness on his cheeks is from tears or sweat. 

“Oh my god.”

Robb notices her then, neck snapping up, blue eyes huge. 

She doesn’t wait for him to say anything, she crosses the room to them and leans in front of Theon, taking his face in her hands. His skin is hot and clammy under her fingers and his eyes don’t see her. There’s vomit covering the front of his shirt. She knows it’s his own. 

“What did he take?”

Robb looks at her confused, overwhelmed, and he shakes his head and looks around like he doesn’t know what words are or how to say them. 

“Robb, what did he take?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. He didn’t say, he…”

“Theon,” she implores, she begs. “Theon, look at me. What did you take?” He’s trying to look at her, she can tell he’s trying, but his eyes don’t focus and his pupils are blown too wide. If her hands weren’t holding him, she’s sure his head would fall forward. 

“Theon…” This time, she hears the way it catches. She’s hears herself start to panic. He only shakes his head and tries to pull away from her.

“Get him over the toilet. Now, Robb.”

She sticks her fingers down his throat until he throws up. 

“Call an ambulance.”

“What? Sansa…”

“Robb, call the fucking ambulance. He’s overdosing.” She’s so frantic now. She knows her hands are shaking and she’s pretty sure she’s crying. But right now she doesn’t have a single second to waste on any of it. “And make sure the kids don’t come down and see this.”

“I’m not-”

“Listen to me! Do you want him to die? Do you want Bran or Rickon to see him like this? After everything? I have him. Now. Call. The. Fucking. Ambulance.”

He swallows whatever he might have said next and nods. They lean Theon against the wall and she sits on her knees between his legs watching his face and touching his jaw as Robb leaves. He’s too warm, beyond feverish and nearing dangerous.

“Can you talk to me, Theon?” 

“Sunssuh,” he slurs. It’s sloppy and she can barely recognize her own name, but he’s talking and it’s the first thing he’s said and if she wasn’t already crying, she would be now.

“Yeah, it’s Sansa. Can you tell me what happened?”

“Sstumpidd,” he mumbles and his head falls back against the wall. 

“Yes. You were very, very stupid. You idiot. But I need to know what you took.”

He shakes his head again and squeezes his eyes shut like he’s in pain. _God dammit._

“Talk to me, Theon.”

He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t open his eyes. “Theon?” The silence that hangs in the air is so thick she could choke on it.

She grabs his face. This is not happening. She will not let this happen. Her hand slaps against the side of his face gently, then harder. “Theon!” 

“No. No, no, no, no, no-” She looks around the bathroom for anything, just anything to help him, to save him. She tries to remember what she knows about overdosing from whatever public school health class has taught her, but her brain is too fried. The only thought she has is ‘Theon is dying’. It plays over and over and over. 

He’s unresponsive. He’s too warm. Brain damage. She can’t think. She needs to cool him down…

She pulls his body up by the shoulders and she uses all her strength, every bit of it, to drag his body across the floor and into the shower. “You’re not dying on me. I won’t let you, you dick.”

She turns the cold water on and it hits her skin like needles, but she doesn’t pay it any attention. She just holds him under the showerhead, his back presses against her chest, his head is on her shoulder. She has her arms around his body, her hands fisted in the front of his shirt feeling it rise with each breath he takes.

They sit there on the floor of the shower and she exists in between every breath he takes, praying there will be a next one. 

“I’ve got you,” she whispers into his hair and she shakes.

She can hear sirens.

 

He makes it. Somehow he makes it. 

When Robb calls her from the hospital and tells her he’s alive. She falls back against the wall and cries.

They check him into rehab three days later.

 

 

 

Life slows down a little after that.

She goes to college. 

She didn’t think she would. At first, she’s going to get a job and stay at home and raise her siblings. But Robb assures her they’ll be fine, he pushes her to go even though he’s the one that dropped out to do the exact same thing. 

Jon tells her she won’t be that far, only an hour and a half drive away, and if they need her or she gets lonely she can come home. 

Arya insists she won’t miss her nagging and she should go.

Then Theon tells her he’ll stick around and keep them all in line and make sure Robb doesn’t set the house on fire making spaghetti. He won’t lie to her if everything isn’t fine like she knows the others will so she doesn’t worry about them. 

So she goes and she starts something new.

 

 

 

He doesn’t show up to the funeral.

Her brother is gone, just like her father, just like her mother, and she’s wondering when her family will stop falling apart around her, and he doesn’t show up to the fucking funeral. 

She hasn’t even seen him since she heard. Since Jon called her in the middle of the night to tell her there had been an accident and Robb was dead. She drops her classes the morning day and drives home. 

She doesn’t cry nearly as much as she should, she’s so well acquainted with death now maybe she’s numb to it. It feels like a betrayal to Robb. 

Robb, her big brother. The strong one, the good one. He was supposed to take care of them and now he’s gone too.

And his best friend isn’t there.

She finds him at his apartment when it’s over. After Jon takes everyone home and she’s too angry and disappointed to ignore it any longer. She pounds on the door as hard as she can and she screams his name until it hurts and she doesn’t give a shit about the neighbors.

“Theon Greyjoy, open the fucking door right now or I swear to god I will break it down!”

He does. He pulls it open and stands there in just his sweatpants holding an almost empty bottle of vodka in one hand. He’s already drunk, she can see it in his eyes, and he probably has been since he woke up. She pushes past him.

“Where the fuck were you?” she spits when the door is closed behind them again. 

“Here. Obviously…”

“Don’t play this shit with me, Theon. You weren’t there. At Robb’s funeral. His fucking funeral.”

“You think maybe I didn’t want to be?”

“Nobody _wanted_ to be. We’ve buried our parents. This is our third funeral in five years. Rickon’s only twelve. You think any of us wanted to sit there and see his body lowered into the ground and say goodbye to him? Our brother? You think it was easy for us? And you couldn’t even bother to be there? Like a coward.”

“Fuck you,” he slurs around another gulp.

“Bran asked where you were. He needed you there. We all needed you there.” _I needed you there._

“Do you want me to apologize? I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I’m sorry I couldn’t deal with it and I couldn’t face it and it hurts too much. I’m sorry I couldn’t stand there and hold your fucking hand and make you feel better and pretend it’ll all be fine. Cuz it won’t! It won’t be fine, Sansa. I’m sorry it was him and not me and I couldn’t do anything about it. Sorry I’m what’s left. Is that what you wanted to hear? Is that what you came here for?”

“He’d would’ve gone to yours.”

He laughs. He fucking laughs. “Yeah, well I’m not him. He’s better.”

“You’re right.” She shakes her head and she hopes he hears the disgust in her voice. “He _was._ "

He can’t even look at her.

“He’d be so disappointed in you,” is the last thing she says before she leaves.

 

 

 

She doesn’t go back to college the next term. 

 

 

 

He relapses. 

She doesn’t even need to hear it from Jon to figure it out. Three weeks since the funeral and he still hasn’t called. He hasn’t shown up. He’s just gone and she’s so resigned to hating him for the rest of her life, she decides she doesn’t care. Why should she worry about him after that?

But then Jon tells her, about how he saw him at the bar, stumbling around and hoe Theon didn’t even recognize him, he was so fucked up. He tells her how skinny he looked, about the bruises under his eyes, and the dead way he looked around the room. He tells her who was with him. He tells her it was Ramsay.

And that’s when she worries. That’s when she remembers she _cares._

Because everyone knows Ramsay Bolton, at least in theory, and he’s the worst kind of news. And if that’s who Theon’s been with, she’s surprised he’s not already dead too. 

Arya spots him at a party a few nights later and she calls Sansa immediately. She doesn’t even have time to be upset her little sister’s at a house party on a school night she’s so desperate to get there. 

“He went in the back a few minutes ago.”

“Thanks. Now go home.”

“But-” she starts to argue. One look and it dies on her lips and she’s nodding. 

The belt is still around his forearm when she finds him. She wants to throw up.

“Theon.”

“Oh, Sansa. Hello.” He looks like a corpse grinning at her. She recognizes Ramsay beside him. The way he smirks at her makes her skin crawl. “What brings you here, babe?”

“I’m here to get you. We’re leaving.” Everyone laughs. Empty sounds.

“Oh, are we? Why would I do that?” 

“Theon…” she warns and she tries to make her voice strong.

“I think I’ll stay here.”

She wants to argue more. If she were strong enough she’d grab his scrawny ass and drag him out of there herself. But she’s not. And she can’t. And she refuses to cry or yell or do anything around the men surrounding her like hyenas. 

“Why don’t you join us sweetheart?” Ramsay sneers. He spreads his legs. “There’s a free seat here.”

Theon swallows like he’s uncomfortable, but when he looks at her he only shrugs.

“Please come home, Theon.” His eyes widen just a fraction at the word home, like he’s surprised, even if it is. Even if it has been since he was thirteen years old. She really thinks he might listen to her. _Please..._

“No.” It breaks her heart. 

 

Jon calls her two days later from the bar and she tries again. 

He’s at the pool tables with his arm around a brunette and a beer in his hand when he sees her. She doesn’t go up to him, but she watches. From her stool at the other end of the bar she watches and she hopes maybe this time he’ll feel it, the desperation in her eyes and her chest, maybe he’ll feel it and he’ll leave.

Ramsay’s the one that comes up to her instead. He tries to talk to her. She asks the pretty bartender for another water and ignores him until he leaves. 

She watches Theon. She chats with Jon when he passes by. Margaery sends her a picture of the new bra she bought and, really, she wishes she were somewhere else and not stressed out of her mind so she could appreciate it. 

The bar’s too loud and too hot and her head is hurting and she’s tired and she forgot to eat dinner before she ran out of the house, telling Arya to put a frozen lasagna in the oven. She gets up to pee and check in at the house and she sways for a moment. She’ll have to ask Jon to sneak her a sandwich when she’s done. 

She’s halfway there when someone grabs her arm and presses her against the wall with enough force to make her head spin. 

“Hello, Sansa.”

When he speaks, she gets it. She smells the rum on his breath and feels his clammy hands on her thighs and the way he hisses her name. She remembers the way he looked at the bartender when she walked in and she knows she’s not hungry or sick or tired.

Ramsay kisses her neck. Cold lips wet against her skin. She thinks she might throw up. 

“Get off,” she pushes him back with as much strength as she has and he stumbles.

But only for a second and then he’s back on her. One hand grabs her wrist, the other, her chin. His fingers are rough and they hurt and they burn where they touch her. Her heart beats too fast and she wonders if Jon has noticed she’s gone or if she yells if anyone would hear her over the music.

She claws at his wrist, digging her nails in as hard as she can, but he doesn’t move. Maybe he’s too high to feel it. Maybe he just doesn’t care.

He leans in and kisses her and this time she hopes she throws up. Then, maybe he’d get off her and she could run. 

When she tries to hit him, he tells her he’ll break her wrist.

He touches her hair.

He tells her she’s pretty and she wishes she wasn’t.

Her eyes are closed and he’s touching her chest and then she collects all her strength and all her straight thoughts and in one moment her knee is up and slamming between his legs. His hands fall. And she moves.

She stumbles a few steps away from him and right into someone else. 

“Watch it, Stark,” he says it with an irritated clip, but then he sees her face. “What-”

He looks over her shoulder.

He looks back at her. 

The confusion fades and something cuts through the thick drug induced haze he’s in. She sees murder in his eyes. 

“You piece of shit-” he moves past her so fast she stumbles and almost falls backwards on her ass and then he slams into Ramsay and everything after that is a confusing, jumbled mess. 

Jon’s there. And the blonde bartender she really likes. Someone moves her outside and there’s lots of shouting and fighting and she remembers some blood she thinks, but she isn’t sure. Somehow Arya’s there and she’s in a car and then she’s home and her head hurts but she can walk on her own and her hands aren’t shaking.

She thinks she remembers crying and Arya holding her hand and rubbing her back. She makes her tea and wraps her in a blanket and says she’ll find him and kill the fucker herself if the boys don’t beat her to it. 

Jon comes home a few hours later, when she’s coherent. He tells her Theon beat the shit out of Ramsay until Jon pulled him off. Then Jon hit him a few more times for good measure. The cops showed up and he snuck Theon out the back. 

“Is he okay?”

“Are you?”

“Yeah. I got him off before…” she trails off. Before he raped me. “I’m alright.”

He nods and sighs and runs a hand through his curls. “Jesus. Sansa, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. I know you’ll think it was, but it wasn’t. Not yours, or mine. Just Ramsay.”

He pretends to accept it, but she knows Jon, and his stupid heart, and she knows he’ll be up late thinking about it. “He’s outside.”

“What?” she squeaks and she’s starting to feel the panic. _He’s outside? Why is he outside?_

“Theon. He wanted to make sure you were okay, but I told him to wait in the car. He’s still… He’s pretty fucked up, I didn’t know…”

“Tell him to come in.” She says it before he can finish his sentence and before she can even think about it. He hesitates. “Please.” She just wants to see him. He’s home and she wants to see him. Jon does.

He stands in the doorway and doesn’t come all the way in, like he’s scared. Or more likely, he doesn’t think he deserves to. It makes her chest hurt to look at him there. 

He’s been crying. His eyes are red and puffy and bloodshot and she knows it’s not all from the drugs by the way he won’t look at her. His lip is busted and his knuckles are swollen like Jon’s had been and he looks so small. She never thought he could look small, but he does.

“Theon,” she whispers it like a secret and a prayer.

“I’m sorry.”

That’s all it takes.

She crosses the room and pulls him against her and they both crumble. They fall like buildings, but they hold on to each other. It’s ugly and messy and very broken, but so are they and she will not let go.

“I’m so sorry, Sansa. I’m _so sorry_ ,” he sobs into her shoulder. Over and over like it’s the only thing he knows how to say until it’s one endless word on a string.

“It’s okay,” she whispers into his hair. One for every sorry he gives her. 

Their tears stain each other’s shirts. His body shakes and heaves and hers trembles and all they can do is apologize and forgive each other and hold on as tight as they possibly fucking can.

 

She holds his hand through the withdrawals as he shakes and sweats and sleeps and wants to give up. For four long days. She does not leave.

“I always thought I was supposed to take care of you,” he whispers to her when it’s over and they can breath.

“Maybe we’ll take care of each other,” she tells him.

 

 

 

“Are you going to put the book down?”

“No.”

“Sansa, come _on_.” She looks up from the page in front of her face to give him a blank expression. “We’re in a restaurant. Put the book down and enjoy the excellent company.”

“Yeah, Sansa. Enjoy our company,” Arya encourages with a laugh that earns her a middle finger from across the table. 

“I can’t. I have to finish it by Friday and I work tomorrow so I won’t have time to do it later.” She’s been taking online classes through the university so she doesn’t have to completely drop out, now that she’s back home. And working at the cafe on 12th that sells mediocre coffee and stale bagels.

“Sansa,” Theon’s voice drops the way it does when he’s trying to parent her. “How long have you been here? You can take a break.” He’s got that soft look in his eyes she hates because she gives in to it every single time.

“Let me finish the chapter. I’ve got three pages left.” He concedes, knowing it’s the best he’ll get out of her, she imagines. She can be just as stubborn.

She finishes the reading while he and Arya talk about hockey, she thinks, since she doesn’t really care anyway. The waitress comes back by and she only asks for a refill on her water. Theon orders himself a burger without cheese and a strawberry milkshake and she shakes her head to herself because she knows exactly what he’s doing. 

Theon hates strawberry milkshakes, he has since he was fourteen and drank too many and threw them back up, and he already told her he ate before he picked Arya up. 

Sansa loves strawberry milkshakes, they’re her favorite, and she doesn’t like cheese on her hamburgers. 

He’ll take a few bites and then say he’s full, or suddenly remember he doesn’t like the food in the first place, and he’ll push them towards her so she can eat the rest of his leftovers. Just like he orders extra fries at the cafe, or doesn’t put butter on his popcorn at the movies because _she_ doesn’t like it getting on her fingers, or gets chips instead of pretzels at the bar. To make sure she’s eating when she forgets to take care of herself. When she gets too carried away taking care of Rickon and Bran and everyone else.

Part of her wants to be annoyed with him because she’s not a kid, but most of her feels a little bit warmer that she has someone to look out for her too. And he thinks she doesn’t notice.

“How’s the boy toy?” he’s asking Arya and drawing lines down the condensation on his glass.

“ _Gendry_ , who is my _friend_ , is doing just fine. Thanks.” Sansa sees her jaw twitch as she finally sets her book to the side. 

“Yes, your _friend_ Gendry,” she agrees dryly. 

“You know what, fuck you both.” They both laugh.

“And how’s the girlfriend, Sans?” he asks her next. She thinks about lying or not saying anything because then they’ll make a big deal out of it and really it’s not a big deal, but she can tell Theon already sees her working it over in her head so what’s the point.

“Ex-girlfriend. Actually.”

“Oh. Shit, sorry.” He looks sympathetic, but she can see him swallow in a funny way and she’s not sure what it means. He’d only met Marg the once, but she supposed they hadn’t gotten on that well.

“Damn, that sucks. What happened?” Arya asks.

“No. It’s fine. It’s really fine, actually. It wasn’t that serious, just the distance thing got to us. Marg is there and I’m staying here, it just didn’t work. We’re good though. Staying friends. You know… that whole thing.” It was the truth. It had been a healthy breakup, maybe the healthiest she’d ever had and Margaery had texted her just that morning about the history professor she wanted to sleep with. Because she’s Margaery. 

“That’s good,” he says with a small smile. 

“And you, Greyjoy?” Arya asks, turning the spotlight back to him. “Any poor, unfortunate women keeping you warm at night?”

“Ha ha.”

They stay for another hour she guesses, just talking with each other. Arya and Theon trade jabs that aren’t really sharp enough to hurt. They gossip about Jon and his supreme idiocy and inability to talk to the redhead at work they all know he has a thing for. She steals fries off his plate and smirks when he slides the remainder of his order to her side of the table like she knew he would. She laughs and it feels good to laugh. She doesn’t do it enough anymore. 

He refuses to let her take the bus home when they’re finally ready to leave even though she argues that it’s fine and he and Arya live in the opposite direction. But it’s no good so she takes the $20 from his hand to go pay while he warms the car up.

She’s not paying any attention walking up to the register, trying to find her wallet in her purse for a tip, and she slams right into someone else.

“Oh sorry!”

“Hey watch the f-” the blond boy stops midway through his scornful sentence when he looks up and sees her face. The anger melts away into interest maybe? “Oh. Hi.”

“Hi,” she smiles. He smiles back.

 

 

 

She starts dating Joffery after that and it’s nice. It’s nice to have a distraction and to have fun and to have someone care about her like that and make her feel important. He takes her to nice restaurants and concert halls and buys her jewelry she knows is far too expensive even though he brushes it off. She wears nice dresses again. She lets herself go in it. 

She sees less of her family, spends less time at home. At first it’s just Saturday nights at his apartment then it’s most of the week. It feels like an escape and she feels like she can be someone better than who she was and she’s not poor Sansa Stark with the dead family. He doesn’t like Theon and she can tell Theon doesn’t like him and so she sees less of him too. And it’s like like a piece isn’t fitting right at first, but she ignores it because she thinks she’s happy.

The first time he yells at her so loud it scares her it’s because she forgot they had plans to go to a banquet for his grandpa and she wasn’t ready on time. He told her she was stupid and she knew she had always been a slow learner so she didn’t disagree with him. She should have paid more attention. 

The next time it’s because she asked about his uncles that no one in the family talks about and he told her to mind her business and threw a book. Then it’s over her not getting the right kind of sauce on his take out. Then it’s all the time.

The first time he hits her is because she left a lipstick in her pocket when she did laundry and ruined his pants. He slaps her. But when he apologizes after and there were tears in his eyes and he tells her he didn’t mean it she just can’t upset him like that, she forgives him. She was so stupid.

Then it happens again. And again. And still he holds her afterwards and cries apologies into her shoulder and she knows it’s her fault. Her fault for not being better or being too broken and she needs to try harder. Because she does love him, or she thinks she’s supposed to, she should, and she doesn’t want to go back to being a shadow again. No one else would love her like _that_ , as that girl. 

She might be an idiot, but she’s always been a phenomenal actress. So she swallows it and she buys more concealer than she’s ever had to in her life and she smiles until it feels right and no one notices and everything is fine. 

Except for Theon. Of course, Theon.

 

“Are you okay?” his voice startles out of whatever day dream she was hiding in, even though it’s soft as a whisper. Her chest deflates for a moment thinking about it. How he’s more soft spoken now, less wild and untamed. Since the drugs. And since Ramsay.

“What?” she asks absently.

“Are you okay? Your hand.” He nods to her wrist where the ace bandage is peeking out the sleeve of her sweatshirt. He says it like an innocent question, but there’s something sharp on the edges of it, like he’s implying something. 

Like he already knows and he’s trying to coax her into confirming it. As if he’d understand it.

“Oh. Yeah, it’s fine. I tripped over Lady the other morning. You know, that cat thing when they walk between your feet. I fell, probably sprained it.” The words come out faster, guiltier than she’d like. Why was it harder to lie to him than everyone else?

“Sansa…” he sighs, defeated. 

“Theon.”

“I’m worried about you,” he admits like she yanked it out of him by force. Like it hurts him. She wants to laugh it off, but when she looks at him, at his eyes, she can’t. He looks sad.

_I’m worried about me too,_ she wants to say. _I’m scared and I hurt, but I don’t know what to do and I don’t want anyone else to get hurt too or to worry about me because Jon and Arya and everyone else, they have their own problems, and I can’t make myself one of them and I don’t know if I’m the same girl anymore or even who I am and I don’t want to make people take care of me._

“I’m fine, Theon. I promise. I just fell. Don’t worry about me,” is what comes out of her mouth.

It makes him look more defeated and more disappointed, but she doesn’t think it’s in her. She thinks he’s disappointed in himself. His eyes beg her one last time to just please say something. 

Maybe she can… maybe she can trust him and he’s safe and she doesn’t have to save him from herself like she does with the rest of them. Maybe-

The horn honks outside and Joffery is there and reality is a slap in the face. No. She can’t tell Theon. There’s nothing to tell. She is fine. She will be fine.

“I’ll see you later,” she says as she walks away.

“Yeah.”

She comes home with a split lip and she’s horrified Theon is there when she walks through the door. Waiting. He takes one look at her and crosses the room. He holds her shoulders and she cries despite how hard she tries not to. She assures him it was an accident. That’s what Joffery tells her. It’s always an accident and it’s always her fault and she is so _weak._

“Don’t tell Jon. Please, don’t tell them. It’s okay. I’m okay, just don’t tell Jon,” she begs.

He promises.

 

 

 

Joffery tells her if she leaves, he’ll find her and he’ll hurt her family. So she stays because she’s scared and she loves her family, they’re all she has left and she doesn’t know what to do anymore.

Theon looks at her like he’s sad and confused and doesn’t get it. She doesn’t either. She wishes she did.

Sometimes she feels numb. Like all her emotions are locked inside her ribcage so they don’t hurt her and she can’t find the key. 

Other days she feels cold. Like she’s standing outside in the rain and she can’t move and her skin is made of ice that’s ready to crack. 

She stops being able to sleep. Her doctor prescribes her sleeping pills, but she still feels tired. She doesn’t eat as much, has to watch her figure Joffery tells her. It doesn’t really taste like food anyway. She fails one class and is about to fail a second. She smiles and it hurts and her body stops feelings like her body and more like a shrink wrapped suit she’s trapped it. 

On her father’s birthday he yells at her for being so sad all the time. For not being the girl he loved anymore. She doesn’t even argue back. She sits there and she listens as he ridicules her and attacks her and spits venom in her face that she should choke on, but she doesn’t even feel any of it anymore.

She waits till he’s done and she goes home. 

When she gets there, Rickon fights with her. Because she’s late and he’s hungry and it’s her turn to cook. She tells him she forgot and he tells her she sucks and then he yells at her too. She thinks she deserves it because she knows she should be better, but she just can’t be. She doesn’t know how.

He leaves with a friend and she feels like her lungs are filled with lead and she can’t move or breathe because her body is too heavy.

She gets a text from Jon asking her what she said to Rickon and her eyes water. 

She sits on her bed and thinks about her father and how long he’s been gone and how much she misses him and how much better at this he was and would be. She doesn’t think he’d be proud of her anymore. That hurts most out of any of it, that she’d disappoint him.

She wants to sleep. She’s so tired. She thinks about the future, a day or a year or twenty years, and it’s painted in black and white and she feels her chest deflate at how much more of this, of life, she still has to go through.

She takes two of her pills. Then, she takes all of them. And then, she hopes, maybe she can rest.

Her phone rings and she turns it off and rolls over. 

As she’s getting darker and darker she thinks she hears someone knocking, but she doesn’t care anymore.

 

She wakes up.

In a bright room that smells too clean with the beep beep beep of the monitors in her ears and she knows he’s in a hospital. She isn’t dead and she still feels tired and her throat hurts. 

And he is there.

He’s small, folded up in the armchair in the corner. He looks like shit, red eyes and greasy hair. 

She calls his name and it feels raw, but he sees her and rushes to her side, to be closer to her, to touch her. Hold her hand and brush her forehead. He says her name over and over like he’s scared of it, scared of breaking it. He makes it sound like a song. 

He tells her he found her. How he knew what day it was and he had wanted to check on her. When she didn’t answer he went to the house. He thought she was asleep when he got there. Then he realized she wasn’t.

He was so worried and she is so sorry. 

“Your fingers were cold,” he tells her as he holds her hand in his, running his thumb gently over her knuckles. His eyes are wet and far away and stormy like the sea. “When I got there and you weren’t moving and I grabbed for your hand. And your fingers were cold. It was like you were already dead.”

“I’m sorry,” she repeats behind tears because what else is she supposed to say? What else is there?

She squeezes his hand as tight as she can, until she knows it’ll bruise and it feels like there’s nothing left. They shake and silently their tears fall together. She hates it. She hates that her pain spoiled him, she let it spread and now it was his too. 

After enough time he blinks and pulls away and she looks at him. He can’t look back.

“Jon is on his way.”

Her heart drops to the floor with the weight of an anvil. _No._

“What?”

“He’s dropping the boys with Arya and then-”

“You called him?” she whispers. It feels like betrayal. 

“Of course I called him. You’re in the hospital.”

“I’m _fine_. You promised. You promised not to tell him, Theon. You said you wouldn’t,” she feels like she’s crying again and these tears are fresh, but cold on her cheeks. It’s like a panic crushing her ribs.

“You were dying, Sans,” it chokes him.

“But I didn’t. You didn’t have to-”

“You tried to kill yourself, Sansa! I’m not gonna keep that from your brother!”

She pulls her hand back from his. Jon can’t know, but now he does. He’ll worry about her when he shouldn’t and he’ll look at her with pity and try to fix everything like he always does, but he can’t. She can’t either. 

“He can’t know! You _swore_.” She feels fire in her throat.

He doesn’t have anything else to say. His lips part for words, but none of them come out. She hates him. She’s ten years old again and his face makes her hands clench into fists and she hates him for ruining it.

He should have left her there, in her bed. She wishes he had. 

“Can you leave?”

“What?”

She thinks looking at him will break her or melt her or both. “Get the fuck out, Theon!”

She can see it go through his chest like it kills him. 

But he leaves.

 

Jon gets there and the first thing he does is hug her. He holds her so tight she can feel her bones breaking. Or maybe smashing back together. They cry. 

Two days later he has her committed to the psychiatric hospital. They put her on suicide watch. 

She hates it. She hates the color of the walls and the way the food smells and the one condescending doctor that thinks he has her pinned down and she feels trapped and she wants to go home. 

But then she slowly starts to get it. And maybe she is broken, but she doesn’t have to stay that way. And maybe she’s stronger than she thinks. Slowly the holes in her start to close. She can breathe. 

Jon and Arya visit her on the weekends and Wednesdays at lunch. They bring the boys once, so they can see her and it reminds her she has a family and they love her. 

Theon doesn’t visit. 

Not once in the three weeks she’s there or after she gets out. He doesn’t come to the house. He doesn’t call her. 

So she goes to him instead. 

“Hi,” she says when he opens the door and his eyes widen. He looks about the same as he did three weeks ago when she told him to leave. She doesn’t understand why she feels so nervous looking at him. _Maybe because he saved your life and you yelled at him for it._

“Hey.” 

“Can I,” she gestures inside.

“Oh, yeah. Yeah, come in.”

His apartment still looks like him. There’s empty containers of Chinese take out on the table with a fork sticking out because he can’t use chopsticks. A wilted paperback is shoved under the throw on the couch because he sometimes he likes to read when he can’t sleep, but he doesn’t want people to know. There’s dirty dishes in the sink, but the counters are clean. He has boots by the door and a pair of pants over the armchair and the whole place smells kinda like cigarettes and kinda like the beach. 

He shuffles around her nervously, like a hummingbird, and she feels like she should just say it. 

“Thank you.”

“What?”

“Thank you, Theon.” _For caring about me. For finding me. For saving my life and then saving me. Even when I didn’t want it. Even when I hated you for it._

He understands. She knows he does when he has to blink and clench his jaw and look away before he nods. “Yeah, well. We take care of eachother.”

She hugs him and it’s true.

 

He goes with her to get her stuff from Joffery’s. 

She leaves with a box of her things. He leaves with a broken hand.

 

 

 

Jon decides to ask Ygritte to move in and she’s so happy for them because, god, finally. It had taken him long enough.

He sits her down to tell her like he’s still in parent mode, but he can’t help blushing and smirking like a dumbass. He’s happy. He and Ygritte have their fights and their history of bullshit, but they were still hanging on and she can tell, right now, they’re really happy. And they deserve that.

He gives her the chance to move out. That’s what the conversation is really about. Rickon is the only one still at home. Arya is living with Gendry and that Hot Pie kid. Even Bran recently moved into his own place. They were growing up, all of them.

“You don’t have to stay anymore. I mean, obviously you can if that’s what you want, but we’re okay now Sansa. We made it. You don’t have to take care of us anymore. You can have your life back.”

“You guys didn’t take it from me, you know?” she says. 

He takes her hand, squeezing her fingers. 

“You did a great job, Sansa. They… They would be really proud of you. All of them.” It brings tears to her eyes. That was all she wanted. “But you don’t have to hold us up anymore. We can walk on our own. You can do things for _you_. If that’s what you want.”

She hugs him for a long time.

And the next day she starts looking for apartments.

The thing is, there aren’t that many downtown and also in her price range. Two weeks later she still hasn’t found any.

“What are we looking at here?” he says from on top of the counter next to her. He’s tossing grapes into his mouth and trying to get a look at her computer screen.

“Get off the counter, Theon.”

“You still looking for apartments?” he asks and doesn’t move.

“Yes,” she sighs and steals a grape from his hand. “Being alive is more expensive than I thought.”

“You could always move in with me.”

“What?” she pauses, looking up at him to see if he’s kidding or not.

“I’ve got a spare bedroom. Yara moved out a couple months ago and we’ve just been using it for storage and stuff, but, I mean, I can clear it out.”

“Are you serious? You live like three blocks from the shop?” 

“Uh, yes?” he says, but it sounds more like a question. 

“You’d really do that?” She’d be so much closer to work, and she already knew him and for some reason Lady didn’t absolutely hate him like she did everyone else.

“Yeah. Of course,” he replies. Of course, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. 

“Okay. Yeah, that would be great.” And her problem is solved like that. 

She boxes up her stuff up, and they move her across town that weekend. And then Theon’s apartment is their apartment and she’s making a new home.

 

 

 

She finds him on the fire escape, like usual. She can see the end of his cigarette through the window.

“Can’t sleep?”

He looks at her over his shoulder as she climbs out next to him. “Not really so much can’t, as just… won’t.”

“How strange for you.” The air is crisp and a little soft in that early summer night kind of way. “I guess it’s a good thing Jon gives you the late shifts.”

“Yeah, well,” he offers her the cigarette and she pulls it between her lips. “Someone’s gotta. Seaworth keeps trying to promote his ass, but Jon won’t take it. Says he’s happy just managing The Wall.”

“He couldn’t handle any more responsibilities than that, honestly.”

“Absolutely not,” he snorts with a puff of smoke, ashes against the railing. “What about you? Why aren’t you sleeping?” 

“I don’t know. Too anxious.”

“How strange for you,” he chuckles. She takes another drag.

They talk, trading occasional words like they trade smokes between hands. She watches the stars and the flickering street lights and the cars driving by. It’s calming to be tired and fractured together. 

“How’s what’s her name? That girl you’ve been seeing, the really pretty one? Ros, right?”

“Uh, yeah. Ros.” He looks down and away and taps his thumbs against his knees. “It didn’t work out.”

“Oh. That sucks.” She almost doesn’t feel like it does.

“Nah. We just had the couple dates. Just wasn’t… there, I guess. It’s fine.” He shrugs it off. Flicks his lighter open. Snaps it shut. 

She wonders if it is fine. He’s acting awkward about it. Maybe he liked her more than he’s saying. Maybe he didn’t like her at all, but he’s feeling some type of way about the whole thing now.

“I’ll be right back,” she announces, ducking inside before he can ask her what for. 

She returns a minute later with a frosty pint of ice cream and two spoons in her hands. Mint chocolate chip because it’s his favorite and this is for him. She slides down next to him again and hands him one of the spoons before opening the top and taking a bite. 

“What’s the this for?”

“You had a breakup and therefore the rules state we must eat ice cream. To comfort you,” she says like it’s obvious. Basic rules. “Don’t argue. Those are the rules. You have to do it. It’ll make you feel better, I promise.”

He shakes his head and grins at her softly. It makes her ice cream taste sweeter somehow. 

“Well, if those are the rules,” he laughs and takes his own big scoop. She can tell she was right. It does make him feel better.

 

 

 

“Okay, here drink this and then take these,” he hands her a tall glass of orange juice and two horse pill that make her throat hurt just looking at them.

But her head is pounding like the duracell rabbit and her nose is so raw she can’t even touch it and she’s shivering through the four separate layers she’s bundled in. It’s the third day of her cold and she still feels like shit. She swallows down the whole glass in a few gulps and manages to choke them down anyway.

“Here, sit up a little bit.” He presses his hand against her back to help her move herself before he slides in beside her. “Okay.” He eases her back down, pillowing her head on his lap. She cuddles in closer, pulling the blanket tighter around her shoulders. Lady is stretched out at her hip.

One of his hands messes with the remote while the other threads itself gently through her hair, scratching against her scalp. She sighs.

She watches him put on The Princess Bride without saying a word because he knows it’s her favorite even as he tries to play it off like he doesn’t and he just found it on accident. She can tell he paid for it earlier. 

He combs through her head and rubs her temples as they watch it. She falls asleep curled against his knees.

 

 

 

She still has nightmares sometimes. She doesn’t think they’ll really ever go away.

Some night they’re about Joffery, raising his hand over her or looking down into her with his cold eyes. Other times, they’re her father, or her mother, or Robb and they’re dead and they blame her and they want the pull her out of her skin. Then, there’s the ones where she’s falling. Tripping and dropping through the air and everything is black and she can’t catch her breath.

She wakes up sweating, with trembling fingers and quick breath. And she’s scared for a moment until she sees his face at the edge of the bed and hears him whispering her name gently into the darkness between them. She wipes at her face and asks him to stay. Please. 

He crawls in next to her, atop the covers, and tines his fingers with hers. 

Eventually, she wakes up and he’s already next to her, his arms wrapped around her body and his fingers rubbing soothingly down her arm. His touch feels like warm water running over hers. And she can fall back to sleep, unafraid. 

 

 

“Wait, you’re living with Theon?” Margaery sputters, almost spitting her lattee across the table. She had come into town to visit her brother the weekend and asked Sansa to get coffee and a doughnut and gossip about the meaningless bullshit in their lives. Her words. Apparently, that included her living arrangements.

“Yes?” Sansa asks.

“Theon Greyjoy?”

“Do I know another Theon?” she asks. She doesn’t know where she’s going with this, but given that’s is Margaery she’s almost afraid to find out. “Yes. I moved in a couple months ago. Why is that a big deal?”

She only smiles, one of her reserved little smirks that used to drive Sansa crazy. The way her mouth would twist at one corner and she would look away like she had a secret, the best secret. She’s doing it now and if Sansa’s being honest it kinda scares her a little bit. 

“No reason,” she brushes off and takes another sip of her coffee. There is absolutely a reason. “Is it working out? Do you guys like grocery shop together and DVR each others favorite shows and argue about laundry? Ew, wait, I bet you guys are like grossly codependent aren’t you?”

There is was. The lilt in her voice she uses to imply something without actually saying anything. She hadn’t been the biggest fan of Theon back in college, but to be fair a lot of people weren’t big fans of him back then, or now, besides the rest of her siblings. And sometimes not even them. 

He’s an acquired taste.

“No” she sighs. “He’s my roommate.”

“Mhmm. Roommate. Gotcha. Well, that’s fun.” She smiles so condescendingly Sansa has to roll her eyes.

“Just spit it out, Marg. I know you want to.”

“The guy saved your life, like actually saved it all hero style and then he beat the fuck out of your piece of shit ex. You’ve known him for like most of your life and you guys have always been weirdly attached to each other even when you didn’t get along and he was an asshole. You are about the only person he listens to, ever. I bet he still follows you around like a stray dog all the time too. And now you are living with him, as his completely unattached, platonic roommate?”

Well, when she puts it like that…

“Yes?” she says it like a question and wants to smack herself because suddenly she’s not so sure of it anymore… 

“That’s some bullshit, but if you’re in denial it’s fine. It’s your own problem,” she smirks again. She really didn’t know why they were still friends at times like these. But she definitely had a way of making Sansa think about things she really did not want to. 

“Eat your doughnut.”

Her phone rings in her pocket and of course it’s his name flashing across the screen because he has the worst timing in the world. She pointedly does not look at Margaery as she answers. 

“Hello?”

“Hey, Sans. Where are you?” He sounds like he’s talking with his mouth full.

“Getting coffee with Marg. Why, what’s up?”

“Ew,” he says and it makes her smile. “I can’t find my pants.”

“You can’t find your pants?” Margaery’s eyebrows shoot up into her hairline and she looks so damn proud of herself. Sansa flips her off.

“Yeah, those black ones with the holes and the zipper thing.”

“Your date jeans?” she asks. And it’s another mistake. He brains isn’t connecting to her mouth today and stupid shit just keep pouring out before she can stop herself. 

“You call them my date jeans? That’s cute.” She can hear the smirk in his voice.

“Whatever, check the laundry. I threw a load in before I left.” She plays with the edge of her napkin, not daring to look anywhere or say anything else. 

“God bless you. Jon needs me to cover for him for a few hours. You want me pick up pizza or something on my way back?”

“Thai,” she decides. He agrees and tells her he’ll see her at home and her stomach does that traitorous little thing where it somersaults around inside her when he calls it home. Like it’s their home. Together.

Margaery, thankfully, stays silent when she hangs up, but the look on her face is enough. 

Sansa thinks about things for a long time after that.

 

 

 

“You’re an idiot, you know that?” she asks as she looks through the freezer for the peas.

“Yeah, I think you’ve mentioned it before.”

She slams the freezer shut. “I’m not kidding. That was so stupid.” She steps between his legs where he’s sitting on the counter and presses the frozen bag to his swollen eye. It’s already starting to darken and bruise in the corner. It’s gonna be a rough one for the next few days. 

“I know,” he sighs, looking down at her. His voice sounds apologetic, but his eyes say he isn’t really. He presses his hand on top of hers against his face. His fingers are warm.

“Why are you like this?”

“Troubled childhood, I think. Bad home life,” he nods to himself, finally making her crack a smile. 

“Of course. I used to do this for you then too, clean you up.”

“Maybe I’ve just always been impulsive.”

“Or protective,” she says, low. He swallows and looks down and she has to sigh. “You know you can’t just start a bar fight with every guy that’s crude with me, right?” 

He snorts. “I can try.”

He was so thick headed sometimes. Dense and impulsive and absolutely ridiculous. “I can take care of myself. You don’t have to break their noses.”

“I know I don’t _have_ to...” he rolls his eyes.

She pulls away, puts the bag of peas down beside him, and gently turns his face in the light. It’s pretty swollen still, pink and angry, but there’s no blood and not broken skin. This time. She huffs again. Him and his protective streak, his overbearing, angry, helicopter mom need to watch out for her. The stiff way he looks at all the men around her when they go out with Jon to the bar. His grumpy face. 

He’s an idiot.

“Are you ever going to kiss me then?”

He freezes and sputters. She has to try not to laugh. She likes his face when he’s clueless and caught off guard.

“Wh- what?”

“If you’re going to get pissy and fight every guy that talks to me at the bar, are you at least going to kiss me?”

He looks at her blankly for a moment, trying to decide if she’s trying to trick him into something. She can’t tell if he’s breathing. “Do you _want_ me to kiss you?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Why don’t you try it and find out.” _Yes, she means. Yes, and please and god just woman up and do it already._

“Why don’t you kiss me then?” he counters back. She wants to smack him.

“Oh my god, Theon. If you don’t want to-” she takes a step back.

His hand grabs at her wrist. He holds her gently like always. Not like she’s fragile and he’ll break her. Like she’s priceless and he cherishes her. He pulls her closer. One step. Two. Till she’s right in front of him, his breath tickling her cheek. He can’t stop looking at her. Her face, her eyes, the slope of her nose, the curve of her mouth.

“I didn’t say that,” he whispers. She doesn’t breathe. 

Then he kisses her. 

His lips brush over hers like a whisper and then press against her skin. Gentle and soft, but so warm. She feels it in her fingers and her toes and definitely in her chest. It’s like someone finally turned the light on and she didn’t even realize how dark it had been. He cups her jaw and she runs her hands up his chest and pulls him closer by his shirt. He still kind of tastes a little like bourbon and a little like candy. 

She sighs into him and she thinks she could float away if she doesn’t get close enough. She thinks she’s been waiting for this feeling for years. This happiness so big and light in her chest she doesn’t know how her ribs have room for it all.

They pull apart at the same time, eager for air, but reluctant to let go. He rests his forehead against hers. 

“I think that was pretty good,” she breathes.

He grins and he’s so beautiful to her in that second. So radiant and bright and she can’t help but smile back. It’s him. 

“I think we should probably do it again. Keep doing it for a while even,” he suggests. His voice is light, but there’s a drag on the ends. She knows he feels it too, he feels the happiness and the realization and his eyes shine as he looks at her. 

She laughs, really laughs, and she kisses him again and everything is so _right._

 

 

 

The bar is busy on a Friday night, but Theon had insisted they all go out in celebration anyway. She was finally graduating college and no girlfriend of his was just going to sit at home, there were drinks to be had and cheers to be made in her name. 

Everyone is there, stretched around the place. Jon and Ygritte, Arya and Gendry, Bran, and even Rickon, Jon’s excuse being that he owns the place so he can let his own family in if he wants to even if he’s only 16, as long as Rickon stays away from the bar and the alcohol itself. 

Theon stays attached to her side like usual, holding her hand or playing with her hair or just pressing his palm to her lower back. Always near and always touching her, like he needs the world to know and like she’s his own perfect secret. 

She feels so full surrounded by all of them, in this place of theirs, celebrating her. They’re here because she did it and she made it. They all made it.

Everyone laughs and drinks and loves each other. 

Jon is behind the bar itself, but he’s too busy flirting with Ygritte, pulling her close and whispering in her ear, to actually be working or making any drinks. No one bothers then though, it’s nice to watch them so happy and stupid for each other. Especially, knowing Ygritte could kick his ass if she ever needed, or just wanted to.

Arya is at the other end of the bar arguing with one of the newer bartenders (the one Brienne is sleeping with and thinks no one notices) over Die Hard she thinks. It’s getting heated from what she can tell. Arya’s face is completely black and impassive, the way Sansa knows she gets when she’s trying not to scream or hit someone. Jaime is rolling his eyes and talking with his hand and shaking his head. She can hear both of their raised voices from where she’s sitting, talking over each other and cutting sentences off before they end.

“How do you deal with him?” she leans over and asks Brienne as the woman pours her another drink. 

She just shakes her head. “Lots of practice,” she says and Sansa has to chuckle.

“Brienne! Come here. We need you to settle something,” he calls to her. She rolls her eyes and sighs as she walks away. Sansa wonders how she thinks people don’t notice. It’s so obvious in the soft way she smiles at him and the way his eyes melt to puddles when he looks at her. 

_Idiots._

Rickon is arguing with Gendry about just buying him a glass of wine because it’s just wine and it’s not like its a big deal, he’s has it before. It’s a valiant effort, but the stubborn bull crosses his arms and doesn’t budge. She thinks he learned it from dating her sister. 

Theon slides his arms around her middle and kisses her hair as he comes up beside her stool. It still makes her smile. 

“Your brother’s high,” he whispers.

“What?” she groans.

He only laughs and points to the corner where, sure enough, Bran is sitting, silently shoveling pretzel stick into his mouth eight at a time and staring blankly at everyone that walks by. She really doesn’t even see him blink.

“For fuck’s sake,” she sighs. “That’s so uncomfortable.”

“I think it’s kind of funny.”

“Of course you would.” He pinches her side and she giggles. She can tell he’s already a little buzzed from the sloppy slant of his smile. She kisses it away and that’s a little sloppy too, but she doesn’t care. She could never get tired of kissing him. 

“Congratulations, babe,” he says quietly against her lips. “You did it.”

It makes her grin more. She did. She fell and she got back up, every single time. And none of it was easy and none of it was painless, but she looks at where she is, what she has now, and she is proud of herself too. She has so much to be proud of and so much too love. 

She loves him. Right there, she loves him. So much. With every part of her.

She had hated him and despised him. She had been annoyed and disappointed in him. She had pushed him too far away and she had leaned on him when she needed to. They had been through so much, too much. But he always found her and now they had this, this beautiful strong thing in their hands. Now she loved him and admired him and was so proud of him.

They had come so far, both on their own and with each other. They had earned it.

“I love you,” she smiles. 

She’s never seen him look so happy. His eyes shine and his lips pull so wide across him face she thinks it’ll split. He kisses her again, hungry and rushed and messy around his smile because he can’t seem to stop and it feels perfect. This, him, it’s torn up and pieced back together and it’s theirs.

“I love you too,” he kisses her nose and pulls back so he can look at her again. 

She smiles and nuzzles his shoulder. She doesn’t believe it took her this long to find it. 

Later, after more drinks, and a few games of darts, and a short intermission breaking up another argument between Arya and Jaime, and Bran trying to explain the difference between ravens and crows to a very confused and uninterested Gendry, she feels fuzzy and warm. 

Her family.

The clink of glass and the clearing of a throat catches the building’s attention. When she turns and sees her own boyfriend actually standing on top of the bar and tapping his beer bottle with a fork she wants to disappear. 

“Dear god,” she whispers under her breath.

“Excuse me, can I please have your attention for one moment?” he calls until everyone is quiet and all eyes are on him.

“What is he doing?” Arya asks, coming up beside her. 

“I have no idea.”

“Hi everyone, hope you’re having a great time. I have something to say. I just want everyone to know, tonight, we are celebrating my beautiful girlfriend right here that I love so fucking much, pardon my language, because she just graduated from college and I am so proud of her.”

Brienne gives her a soft, sympathetic look and Sansa has to cover her face.

“She is the smartest, and the prettiest, and the best person I know and I am the luckiest man in the world to get to love her. So cheers to Sansa, for putting up with me and for doing that shit!” 

Surprisingly, there’s a brief rumble of cheers and affirmations when he raises his drink in the air. The people around her chuckle and bump her shoulder and every one drinks in her honor. She feels oddly prideful. 

“Okay, big guy. Let’s get you down now.” Jon and Brienne help him down without falling on his ass and send him over to her. The bar is still quiet. She thinks they’re all watching them.

“You are ridiculous,” she shakes her head wrapping her arms around his neck.

“I know,” he smirks before she kisses him. 

Some people clap like it’s a fucking movie. She can hear Ygritte whistle and Arya boo her through a laugh.

None of it matters.

 

 

 

“I just can’t believe her,” she says around the toothbrush and toothpaste frothing in her mouth. She’s standing in the bathroom doorway, exasperated and throwing her arms in the air and ranting to Theon from his place on the bed.

“I think it fits them. They aren’t really very extravagant people.”

“I know, but they just went to the courthouse and she didn’t even tell anyone until after. I’m her sister. She could’ve, I don’t know, called me to let me know she was getting married. At _least_.” She spits in the sink, rinsing out her mouth.

“She called you after. It was for them, their thing. And they’re happy now,” he calls.

“I guess,” she huffs, coming out of the bathroom and walking to the bed to pout to him. “What?”

He’s looking at her weird, kinda dreamy and kinda intense. His eyes are soft and his mouth is smirking and his eyebrows pull together a little in the middle as if by an invisible thread. 

“Do I have toothpaste on my face?” she wipes at her mouth.

“Nah, you’re just beautiful. I like looking at you,” he grins. 

It makes her heart flutter against her ribs like it’s grown wings and wants to fly away. 

“Shut up,” she mutters. She knows she looks an absolute mess. She’s already taken her makeup off. Her hair is unwashed and piled in a knotted mess on top of her head. She’s in one of his old t-shirts from high school with the stretched out collar and the hole in the right armpit that almost reaches her knees. The front is tucked into her pink flannel pajama bottoms. She knows her face must be pale and bruised from exhaustion and her lips are chapped from the wind.

He still looks at her like that though, like she’s something special, and then he jumps out and wraps his arms around her middle, pulling her, giggling and flailing, to him until she’s in his lap with her legs wrapped around his waist and he can kiss her. 

“I love you,” he says like it’s the first time. “You are the best thing that has ever happened to me.”

“Stop,” she smiles so she doesn’t do something stupid like cry. She holds his face and kisses his mouth, and then his nose, and then his forehead. “I love you too.”

He beams. She loves it. She loves the lightness in his face and the way he closes his eyes to bathe in it, to bathe in her. She’s never felt loved like this before.

“I’ll never get tired of hearing you say that,” he sighs.

“Then I’ll never stop saying it.”

His fingers run down her cheek and along her jaw. He looks wistful and in awe and maybe like he still can’t believe it. Sometimes she can’t either. That she could get so lucky to find him, time and time again. They deserved all of it. Every second, every kiss, every brush of fingers. 

“You saved me, you know?” 

She thinks of all the times she had tried. All the times she never gave up on him, even when she wanted to. And all the times he never gave up on her, even when she pushed him away. 

“You saved me too,” she whispers. “We saved each other.”

All that pain, all the dark nights, the tears, the nightmares and the bruises and the bloody lips. All the times she wanted to run away from it and she wanted to be someone else and she wanted to hate the world for knocking her down. She didn’t and it led her here. To him. To this. 

They might still be a little broken and a little torn, but they’re okay and they have each other to hold all those tiny pieces together.

She thinks it’s worth it. He is worth every bit of it. Loving him and being loved by him, it’s the best thing to happen to her in a long time.

“We should keep doing that,” he suggests, his voice getting lower. 

She smiles. “I think that’s a great idea.”

She kisses him and he tastes like the future.


End file.
